Henrietta Hay's Column

One of the seven wonders of the modern world is the ability, of three or four or more generations to exist together at the same time without major mayhem. Actually, sometimes they don't.

When this was an agrarian country, it was customary for several generations of the same family to live together and take care of each other. Whatever pressures there may have been we don't know about. On thinking back, I suspect that the generations probably reacted to each other about the way we do now, but they didn't talk a lot about it.

Today, families are often spread across the country. The generations have become separated more, both physically and psychologically. We talk about seniors, people who may be any age from 60 to 110. The huge baby boomer bunch is nearly eligible for AARP. The baby busters follow the boomers. The latest group I just heard described is the X generation. Somehow we get the impression that we are all different species. All too often we don't understand each other very well. We don't even speak the same language.

One of the great advantages of being a crone (definition: wise old woman) is watching the generations and trying to figure out where they are coming from and even better, where they're going. Since my own children and grandchildren live many miles from me, I can study the phenomenon impersonally and sound wise without knowing what I am talking about. I probably should watch MTV more to learn the latest language but that is going beyond the call of duty. Instead I rely on my High School buddy to keep me informed.

This bit of philosophizing was started by a movie which I would not have seen had I not been dragged to it by a couple of young women who are in what you might call the pre-X generation. They are called teenagers. The movie was Reality Bites, and it tells of four recent college graduates trying to find jobs and figure out what their lives are all about.

This movie shocked me a little, not because of the behavior of the young people, which was pretty weird, but because of their utter surprise when reality hit them. They floundered around like a bunch of beached fish, whining all the time.

The New Yorker defines the X generation as "... a large subculture of white middle-class kids born after the baby boom, who now, as they enter adulthood, feel cheated by history. The boomers had all the fun in the sixties and then they took all the good jobs..." After one of their many crises one of the characters said, "I don't understand why things can't go back to normal at the end of the half hour, like The Brady Bunch." "Because," someone replies, "Mr. Brady died of AIDS."

I will concede that the X generation has some tough problems. Many of them come from fragmented families, jobs are scarce and there is the threat of AIDS looming over them. In spite of that they are full of the same idealism that every preceding generation had. What makes it funny is that those baby boomers that had all the fun and took all the good jobs are their parents. These are the children of the sixties rebels, those wild-eyed hippies with flowers in their hair. The parents are portrayed in the movie as complete sell-outs to the capitalistic society who drive BMW's and don't understand Their kids. So what's new?

This was a pretty good movie and I'm glad I saw it. It made me a little uncomfortable, though until I realized it is the same old story re-told. My friend the philosopher commented that, "Reality Bites is this generation's The Graduate. Each generation has to invent its own way into 'grownupness'."

Has it been like that for all of us? Probably. My generation had Rudolf Valentino and Nelson Eddy and Doris Day, but they didn't have much to say about the problems of growing up. In films they never grew up. They remained young and adolescent forever. In fact, some wag commented that he knew Doris Day before she became a virgin.

I guess we all think our parents are pretty stuffy and don't know much, and some years later we think our kids are pretty weird and will never grow up.

A parent's best revenge is grandchildren. It all evens out.